Four Neighboring African Tribes Are More Genetically Different Than Ronald Reagan And Mao Zedong

From a human evolutionary perspective, the external characteristics that we associate with race have almost nothing to do with fundamental differentness or genetic diversity.

World map of human migrations, with the North Pole at center. Africa, harboring the start of the migration, is at the top left and South America at the far right. Migration patterns are based on studies of mitochondrial (matrilinear) DNA. Dashed lines are hypothetical migrations.Wikimedia commonsThis is a Wikimedia Commons map of the human migration out of Africa (upper left of diagram, North Pole in the center), showing our inexorable advancement to every corner of the globe. By testing the persistent mutations of mitochondrial DNA of modern humans (passed from mothers to their children, so tracing the matrilineal line), we can identify which genetic populations (called haplo-groups) precede others, and by how long.

The earliest splits of the mtDNA haplogroup occurred within Africa itself (L1, L2, and L3) between 130,000 and 170,000 years ago. Once out of Africa the human animal migrated first to South and Southeast Asia (60-70,000 years ago), then to Europe (40-50,000 years ago), and from there to East Asia, North America, and South America.

It's not that the Khoisan are somehow more primitive or "less evolved" than Europeans or Asians. They are just as evolved as any other group of humans. It simply means that because their respective tribes separated from each other about 150,000 years ago, their genetic codes have mutated independently for a lot longer than the Chinese and American tribes.

Mao and Reagan share a common matrilineal ancestor from maybe 40,000 years ago. !Gubi and G/aq'o, on the other hand, have to go back 150,000 years to find their common mother. There is enormous genotype differentiation between the various sub-linguistic groups of the Khoisan despite very little phenotype differentiation…from a human perspective the Khoisan are a veritable Amazon rainforest of genetic diversity.

They don't look different, but genetically speaking they are VERY different.

On the other hand, the genetic diversity found within a modern, cosmopolitan city — no matter how much of an ethnic and racial melting pot it might be — is quite low by comparison. It's a hard concept to grasp because it goes against the "evidence" of our own eyes, but the distinction between genotype and phenotype (and the primacy of the former for explanatory usefulness) is about as important a concept as there is in evolutionary theory.